How much should I charge advertisers?

[david_uk]

Been an adsense publisher for nearly two years now, and was thinking about branching out a bit.

My site is 1 or 2 on google for my keywords, and most other engines does well on. I have a spot top left of the page that I'd like to sell as advertising space. Currently occupied by Google search box.

Thing is, as I've never done direct advertising I have no idea as to how much to charge, or if it's cpm or clicks that I should charge by.

Anyone able to help me out here please?

Thanks

[Broadway]

I sell some advertising directly. Since this advertising is typically "text link" advertising I don't mix Adsense and the advertising space I've sold on my own on the same page.

As far as price, I simply get an idea of how much Adsense can make on a page and then charge the advertiser this same amount. To me its a way of diversifying income, I'm not out to make a killing or gouge anyone.

I think that it must be hard for a page on my site to be as valuable to a single advertiser as it is to an Adsense block (which shows a varitety of ads). For this reason I consider the single advertiser the "sponsor" of the page and give them text link advertising in a number of locations on the page. I do whatever I can to make it worth their while and a good value to them, because like I said I want diversity in my income.

[david_uk]

Thanks for the reply.

So would saying to advertisers that the charge is $x be one way to go?

What about saying that the charge is $x per 1000 impressions, and basing the charges on adsense income for the page?

On the page I am intending to put the space on, I do very well out of adsense, and I guess that this amount would be over what who I see as my typical advertiser would be willing to pay. But I guess if I put the charges too high, then I'll get no takers ;) and can adjust downwards accordingly.

[activeco]

What about saying that the charge is $x per 1000 impressions, and basing the charges on adsense income for the page?

I was thinking the same, but then, would there be any difference in earnings at all?
You will surely have some clicks to the ad (which is good) but that means less adsense income.

So maybe the best strategy would be to check Ov or Google bids for the most successfull keywords/phrases for your site.
Take the average of say, first five bids per keyword and then the average of all of the keywords together to get an average price per click.

I would go for 20%-30% less of the average to get the final PPC.
To get CPM use your AS CTR value (assuming the ads would be equally positioned) and make the calculation for CPM: CPM=PPCx1000xCTR

Of course you can do your own variation of the suggested model.

[david_uk]

Current thoughts are charge a reasonable rate for CPM ads - probably under what advertisers would have to pay via Google. The 30% figure sounds very fair. Any clicks could be charged at a fixed rate - again probably based on an average Google EPC figure less 30%.

The spot I have earmarked for the ads is where I currently have an ad for a book I co-authored that hasn't sold. The presence of that ad for a few weeks doesn't seem to have affected adsense earnings.

I've put up a rotator that alternates between the existing ad, and an invitation to advertise on the site to see if there is any interest.

[jchampliaud]

I sell banner ads on my travel related site for about 40% of my AdSense gross. The Adsense ads goes above the fold (across the top) and the banners at the bottom. One thing I'd also point out is that having ads can cut into your adSense income. That's been my experance.